It had only been a few weeks since I first encountered Pavel Friedmann’s poem, “The Butterfly” when I found myself in my backyard, down by the water’s edge trimming down a thick, tangled mess of sharp pricker bushes. Foolishly, I didn’t bother to put gloves on and so despite my best attempt to be careful, I managed to get scratched and pricked by some pretty nasty thorns, a couple of which drew blood. Standing there in the midst of coiled thorny branches resembling razor wire, I muttered a few choice words under my breath, and continued, almost defiantly, to cut away at the offending vegetation. Just then I notice a brief yellow flash in my peripheral vision. I turned and saw a yellow and black butterfly fluttering over the green chutes of the pond irises.

I see butterflies a lot in my yard, particularly down by the edge of the pond. In the arts butterflies can symbolize many things... transience, birth or rebirth. In Christian art the butterfly often represents resurrection. Butterflies are symbols of hope and freedom as well.

The little butterfly that appeared on this day drew me away from my mundane task to pause and observe. I watched it as it hovered gently, quietly. It did not stay long and as it departed, I extracted myself from the pile of branches around me, some of which clung to my jeans as I stepped onto the lawn. I couldn’t help in that moment but think of Pavel Friedmann and his poem, “The Butterfly.”

Friedmann was born in Prague in 1921. In 1942 he was sent to Terezin, an old fortress outside of Prague that was turned into a work camp by the Nazis. Among its prisoners were a large number of artists, writers, musicians and scholars. Friedmann was later moved to Auschwitz here he died 1944. His poem, “The Butterfly”, was discovered in Terezin after the camp was liberated at the end of WWII.Through his poem, Friedmann gives voice to the experience of hope and freedom...slipping away. A butterfly ascending over the lifeless white stone of the camp below...kissing the world goodbye. Permeated by a deep sense of longing, his words point us toward truth and a offer us a warning...”butterflies don’t live in here, In the ghetto.”

Friedmann lived his last years in a literal, albeit extreme form of a ghetto, a geographic location created by the social and political forces of his time. But ghettos are not only physical places....but exist spiritually, mentally, and emotionally as well. Indeed, all visible, physical ghettos originate from those first formed in the human mind.

This ghettoization of the mind is manifest individually and collectively in the prejudices we hold and act upon, forms of objectification we practice in relation to others. It is evident in the wars we wage, vengeance we seek, and the abuse of our planet. It is at the heart of every religious, social, economic, and political conflict; the root of every harmful ism and phobia that divides people from one another, themselves and our source...call it God, Goddess, Mystery, Spirit of Life or what have you.

It is separation that ideally religion, worship, ritual, and spiritual practice is used to dismantle. For Unitarian Universalists, two core aspects of our faith take such separation head on: the inherent worth and dignity of all people and respect for the interconnected web of existence of which we are all a part.

The first calls us to recognize that all people, regardless of the many ways in which we might differ from one another, have worth and dignity and should be treated accordingly. It does not mean, as is commonly believed, that we are called to accommodate maladaptive behavior or yield to the whim of every individual within our congregations. Rather we are called to live and relate to others with compassion and empathy.

The other seeks to develop and deepen an awareness that we do not exist in isolation and that our choices and actions as well as those of others impact lives and life forms beyond our own.

This does not mean, as some of us may have been told by a well meaning parent or grandparent that somehow whether or not we eat everything on our plate immediately and directly impacts people without enough to eat halfway around the world, but rather serves to remind us that we share a common home and destiny as living beings, that whatever we do to the least, we do to all, including ourselves.

No two flowers are alike, not two people are alike;yet each has a contribution to make;each would help to make this world as beautiful as a colorful bouquet.Organized and growing into a true community.We are ready to serve one another,The nation and the world.By exchanging flowers we signify that we are willing,in the spirit of tolerance and patience,To march together in search of truth,Disregarding all that usually divides humankind.

Flower Communion, then, is more than a lovely springtime ceremony. It is a sacred ritual in which we are called to witness to the breadth of human diversity and the beauty of a co-creative life.

Capek, who lost his life at the hands of the Nazi’s at Dachau, in part for his belief in the beauty and value of human diversity, would, I think, be pleased to know the ceremony he created lives on. For as the physical world in which he found himself continued to shrink and wall upon wall close in around him... the ghettos...camps...and gas chambers originating in the walled minds of cowardly men, Capek worked to chip away at whatever walls existed within his own mind by living true to his ideals within prison, caring for and providing solace to fellow prisoners, and leaving us these words:

It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals.Oh blow ye evil winds into my body’s fire; my soul you’ll never unravel.Even though disappointed a thousand times or fallen in the fight and everything would worthless seem,I have lived amidst eternity.Be grateful, my soul,My life was worth living.He who was pressed from all sides but remained victorious in spirit is welcomed into the choir of heroes.He who overcame the fetters giving wing to the mind is entering into the golden age of the victorious.

My thought now returns to the butterfly, not the one I saw in my yard, not the one from the poem, but the one surely present as a lived experience of hope and freedom, colorful, dazzling and alive, body and spirit in Norbert Capek, the last butterfly I hope Pavel Friedmann saw once more before his life was taken...the one I pray we all will see and know before our own journey’s end. May it be so.